Animated Season 3 officially confirmed...

[griffin]

...but won't air until around March-April 2009 (Spring in the Nth Hemisphere).
The 3rd season (13 episodes) has been picked up by distributors, including the one for Australia, so at least we will see it here.
http://www.c21media.net/news/detail.asp?area=79&article=45355

[kup]

The schedule makes perfect sense.

Seasons 1-2 were completed before the first episode was aired because originally it was all supposed to all be Season 1 but was later split in two. With Season 3 they had to wait and see how Animated did in the ratings and see if Cartoon Network (and Hasbro) green lighted a new season and only then could they go into production.

However the 13 episode bit feels as if they are still testing the water although Beast Wars went through a similar phase after Season 1 with two shorter seasons following it.

[Pulse]

September? :(

I guess they don't want it overlapping with ROTF... :rolleyes:

[MV75]

Err, spring USA. Remember the northern hemisphere has different seasons to us.

That's like only 4-6 months away, not 10. ;)

[i_amtrunks]

Strange that it will be so soon after the movie. Thought Hasbro would prefer to have the toy shelves flooded with crappy Movie toys through till Christmas again.

And I do remember that Derrick Wyatt mentioned that no part of Season 3 had been drawn yet, which would only leave them 10 months or so to animate an entire season...

[griffin]

Fixed up the release month, as the article did say Spring, but I got mixed up trying to convert it (was trying to prevent confusion with the seasons, but ended up making it worse :( ). Sorry about that.
It was listed as a Spring release in America, which is like March-April. I guess that means they want to get the bulk of Animated out of stores by June for the Movie launch. Doesn't leave them much time to produce the episodes though, if they haven't done anything, or much, yet.

[i_amtrunks]

Fixed up the release month, as the article did say Spring, but I got mixed up trying to convert it (was trying to prevent confusion with the seasons, but ended up making it worse :( ). Sorry about that.
It was listed as a Spring release in America, which is like March-April. I guess that means they want to get the bulk of Animated out of stores by June for the Movie launch. Doesn't leave them much time to produce the episodes though, if they haven't done anything, or much, yet.

Even less time to make the season, and even more likely to cross over with the Movie line... unless of course they intend to stick to their plan of action inside Australia: If the show is on, no toys will be on the shelves, if the show isnt on, the toys are everywhere.

[GoktimusPrime]

However the 13 episode bit feels as if they are still testing the water although Beast Wars went through a similar phase after Season 1 with two shorter seasons following it.
I believe that was because Mainframe had reduced budgets for Seasons 2 and 3... from what I heard the budget for Season 2 was half of that for Season 1, hence why they halved the number of episodes and focused on producing 13 quality eps rather than 26 mediocre ones.

[Bartrim]

Well this is good news. I really enjoyed the first two seasons. I hope season 3 picks up where season 2 left off.